Hi Ed,
I saw your post on the MINIMALIST event thread telling about the rain you found which ruined your activation and I’m sorry for that.
On this side, I managed to carry out this morning my 53rd activation of Mt. San Cristobal.
It had rained quite a lot yesterday, particularly in the afternoon-evening and it was a very cloudy morning today. But I hiked up, set up, activated on 20m CW and SSB while a dark grey cloud was little by little covering the summit and the rain cought me during descent. I got to the car wet but happy because my log was dry with a good number of QSOs in it.
SOTA 1 - WX 0
Absolutely, Ken. 45.5° C is just like hell and people can do nothing outside in such conditions.
After having lived for 8 years in Madrid with such high temperatures and far too much sun and hot and little rain over several months a year, now I’m back to my home land near the Pyrenees mountains in the North and I’m grateful for the essential for life rain, as well as for each and every cloudy day we get.
They are a real gift.
Best 73,
Hi Guru,
I think you misunderstood my report on my Minimalist activation - the forecast rain never came! The weather was a lot better than expected. I stopped my activation when I did however as, from the forecast I expected rain and I had an over 30 minute walk back down to the car.
Where rain was forecast from mid Friday afternoon all the way through Saturday and Sunday, it only arrived Saturday evening.
I actually worked Antonio EC2AG on San Christobal yesterday when he was there with you - it must be becoming one of the favorite SOTA summits in the area!
No Worries Guru - your picture is very much what it was like here last night. When the sky is like that, it’s better to be inside, rather than on a summit!
Well, nearly 3 years after my failed attemp to activate Intzako Dorrea EA2/NV-018, it looks like we’ll have a nice WX tomorrow morning and I’m going to try again to activate it.
The situation hasn’t changed much with respect to 3 years ago: this summit has been activated mainly on VHF and UHF with only 7 QSOs on 10m.
Stay tuned!
I hope to be able to log many QSOs.
73,
I tried today through the same route I used 3 years ago.
The hike started at 7h50 utc. After the first few minutes hiking, I found these very small traces of snow:
Unfortunately, I finally had to abandon due to 1m of snow well before the summit and myself not being conveniently equipped for that. No snowshoes, no skies…
I found a section where the snow was frozen hard and I was able to walk on its surface, but this didn’t last long and later I found that the snow at the point where I decided to abandon, was as deep as my full leg and while my light 4 legged companion Lucho had no problems to walk on the snow surface, I was heavier and 2 legged, therefore getting the full length of my legs in the snow at each step. At that point, it was 09h39 utc, 1h and 50 minutes hiking and I still was so far away from the summit, progressing like this was so slow, tedious and exhausting that I decided to admit a new defeat from this mountain and turn back.
After having descended the few meters of the very slope where I had to abandon, I took this picture for you to see my fishing rod with nearly 80-90 cm in the snow.
Well, 2 times defeated by this mountain makes me really eager to finally conquering it and making a SOTA activation from its top. I hope it will not be in 3 more years…
